perfidy

Oh, now this is just too much! A pregnant woman in New York was fined for loitering, because she got tired coming up out of the subway and sat down on the steps for a breather. No kidding. "A spokesman for the police union says cops on the beat are being pressured to generate cash for the financially strapped city....The Bloomberg Administration says there is no ticket quota for police." Gee, it's almost as if the NYPD wanted Mayor Bloomberg to seem like a giant flaming A-hole or something. In-teresting.

It occurs to me that New York is a very different place today than it was even when I lived there three years ago. That was the Late Rudy Years and the city was still pretty damn cool. The no-dancing law was a pain in the butt, as was the no-nudie-bar law, and you'd periodically hear about some poor homeless guys getting kicked off the steps of a church, but overall the city experience was fabulous. The Upper East Side was tony, the Lower East Side was gritty without any menace, the subway was cheap, Queens was nice (for me!), one could still enjoy a beer and a cig, and any minor city-as-nagging-mother statutes were just that, minor drawbacks to a good quality of life.

Not so much anymore, it seems. The Nagging Mother State is fully in charge, and it sucks worse than a lunchtime show at Score's with the pasties on. I was thinking about a trip to New York in a couple months to revisit my old stomping ground, but now I'm gonna forget it and just read "Naked Lunch" instead. For no good reason, a rather lengthy excerpt follows here:

BENWAY

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, co-operatives, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic facade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D.-- Total Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct."

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in a bathing suit or pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant "provisional detention"; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was approved by the Assistant Arbiter of explanations. Since this official hardly ever came to his office, and the Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.

All benches were removed from the city, all fountains turned off, all flowers and trees destroyed. Huge electric buzzers on the top of every apartment house (everyone lived in apartments) rang the quarter hour. Often the vibrations would throw people out of bed. Searchlights played over the town all night (no one was permitted to use shades, curtains, shutters or blinds).

No one ever looked at anyone else because of the strict law against importuning, with or without verbal approach, anyone for any purpose, sexual or otherwise. All cafes and bars were closed. Liquor could only be obtained with a special permit, and the liquor so obtained could not be sold or given or in any way transferred to anyone else, and the presence of anyone else in the room was considered prima facie evidence of
conspiracy to transfer liquor.

No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone's quarters and start "looking for it."

The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a hand-
kerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which they make sneering and derogatory comments. Many a latent homosexual was carried out in a straitjacket when they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.

"And what is this supposed to be for?"
"It's a pen wiper."
"A pen wiper, he says."
"I've heard everything now."
"I guess this is all we need. Come on, you."

After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats.

Mnnnn, sounds like my kinda place! While making a comparison between Annexia and modern New York is a bit of a stretch, it doesn't seem like much of one when pregnant women are fined for the express purpose of raising money for the state. (Not to mention cops dressing up like homeless people and standing in intersections keeping an eye out for seat belt violators. Isn't there a murder somewhere to investigate? My mom can take care of wiping my face, thank you very much!)